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In the Encounters in the Wild series, renowned nature writer Jim Crumley gets up close and personal with British wildlife: here, the badger. With his inimitable passion and vision, he relives memorable encounters with some of our best-loved native species, offering intimate insights into their extraordinary lives.

“Suddenly the boar’s face was back, peering up from almost ground level beneath the lowest sweep of the spruce branches. Almost at once, the sow was right beside him. Then came the cubs. For perhaps ten seconds, no more, all four faces gleamed garishly out of the forest at me. They looked like nothing so much as characters in a puppet theatre and an absurd image came into my head of the puppet master crouched behind them, dangling two puppet masks on strings from each hand. In all my badger encounters, nothing has charmed me so utterly as those ten seconds.”

A nature writer, journalist and poet with 30 books to his name, Jim Crumley is also in high demand as a contributor for TV and radio, as well as print media. Jim’s 2014 book, The Eagle’s Way, was shortlisted for a prestigious Saltire Society award, and his Encounters in the Wild series – which sees Jim get up close and personal with Britain’s favourite animals – has found him many new readers. He has also recently written about the return of the beaver to the UK’s wetlands in Nature’s Architect (Saraband, 2015) and chronicled a majestic and moody British autumn in The Nature of Autumn (Saraband, 2016).

“A passionate, compelling, very personal work… the honesty of his voice is striking.” Scottish Review of Books